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Tarih Okulu The History SchoolOcak-Nisan 2011 January-April 2011SayIX, ss. 37-60. Number IX, pp. 37-60.

DECLINE OF A MYTH: PERSPECTIVES ON THEOTTOMAN DECLINE

M. Fatih ALIIR

For, although one may be very strong in armed forces,yet in entering a province one has alwaysneed of the goodwill of the natives.

(Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532)

Abstract

Few themes are more important to or controversial in the current historical research intothe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the Ottoman Empire than decline. Anolder, still axiomatic position sketched out most famously by Bernard Lewis places theimperial history in the framework of three and a half centuries of inevitable decline.An alternate approach, originating in the works of western historians such as FernandBraudel, Roger Owen, Linda Darling, and Gbor goston, to name but few, begins withthe basic question of how an empire can sustain over three centuries of unrelentingdecline. Locating itself in the latter alternative approach, the aim of this project is toshed light on the inadequacies of the declinist historiographical model by focusing on

the Ottoman administrative practices in the western/Habsburg frontier with a specialreference to the Kprl restoration in the second half of the seventeenth century. Thiswork suggests that although the Ottoman writers and the modern historians have arguedabout an Ottoman decline in the period, political and military achievements of theKprl viziers and flexible policies of the Ottoman pashas in the frontier prove theopposite.

PhD Student, Georgetown University, History Department. [email protected]


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Key words:Ottoman Empire, decline paradigm, seventeenth century, Kprl family,frontiers.

Bir Mitin k: OsmanlGerileyii zerinePerspektifler

zet

Son zamanlarda on yedinci ve on sekizinci yzyl Osmanl tarihi zerine yaplanaratrmalar zellikle Osmanl gerilemesi tezi zerine younlamaktadr. Bernard

Lewis ve takipisi tarihilerin

srarla vurgulad

eski ve halen yayg

n genel kanaatOsmanlnn son yz elli yln kanlmaz gerileme ve k tezi erevesindeyorumlar. Buna karlk, Fernand Braudel, Roger Owen, Linda Darling, Gbor gostongibi batl tarihiler tarafndan ortaya konan alternatif yaklam ise bir imparatorluun yz yl boyunca kmesinin mmkn olup olmad ve ayet yleyse,imparatorluun bu srekli ke nasl dayand sorusuyla balar. Bu alternatifyaklam erevesinde konuyu ele alan elinizdeki mevcut almann amac, Kprlrestorasyonu denilen on yedinci yzyln ikincisi yarsnda Habsburg serhadindeuygulanan politikalar altnda gerilemeci tarih yazmnn noksanlklarnadeinmektir. Her ne kadar kimi Osmanl yazarlar ve modern tarihiler sz konusudnemde ak bir gerilemenin varlndan bahsetse de, Kprl ailesinden gelenvezirlerin elde ettii siyasi ve askeri baarlarn yan sra serhat boylarndaki Osmanlpaalarn yrtt esnek politikalarn bu iddiann aksini gsterdii vurgulanmaktadr.

Anahtar kelimeler: Osmanl mparatorluu, gerileme tezi, on yedinci yzyl,Kprl ailesi, serhat.

Introduction

While the notion of history as progress stands largely discredited today amonghistorians less notice was given to the myth of decline. For the most part of theOttoman history, it is still dominant paradigm in the historiography to evaluatethe last three centuries of the empire in decline vis--vis progressingEuropean powers. So far, only a few scholars have attempted to criticize thisreadily accepted paradigm and tried to provide alternative perspectives toreconstruct the Ottoman past. This is not an easy task at all. On the one hand,there are pitfalls of the Eurocentric explanations of global history. On the other,

there are contemporary Ottoman writers, who put numerous accounts promoting


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Decline of A Myth: Perpectives on the Ottoman Decline

39

the idea of decline in the Ottoman imperial system. Besides, the prematurecharacteristics of the Ottoman studies and still unexplored records in the

archives made it enormously difficult for the modern historian to have asubstantial idea on various aspects of the Ottoman organization. With the lackof this ground, it is hard for the historian to downplay the decline paradigm and

put the Ottoman experience into a more nuanced and well-balanced globalcontext with a clear definition of its own imperial logic and methods.1

One of the examples to illustrate how the decline paradigm is still at workin the modern scholarship can be detached in Alan Palmers widely-read

popular book, The Decline and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire, in which the

prolific English author took the failure of the Ottomans in taking Vienna in1683 as a starting point for the Ottoman decline and ended it with theabolition of the sultanate in 1922 by Mustafa Kemal (Atatrk).2 While it iscertainly not an academic work, the authors understanding of the last threecenturies of the Ottoman Empire was clearly shaped by abundant academicstudies. According to this literature, incompetent rulers came to power afterSuleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566) and failed to control the vast territorialand financial resources of the centralized empire. The Ottoman finances hadsuffered as a result of the price revolution that was triggered by the influx ofAmerican silver into the European and the Ottoman markets in the late sixteenthcentury. Military decline ensued after the disastrous defeat of the Ottoman armyin the second siege of Vienna in 1683. Besides, the bigotry that dominated thereligious and educational institutions accelerated the long and inevitable declineof the empire. Nineteenth-century Ottoman history was the history of thewestern/modern reforms that could not yet prevent the death of the sick man ofEurope.3 The Ottoman Empire, eventually, collapsed after the First World

1

For earlier discussions on the decline paradigm in Ottoman context see Jonathan Grant,Rethinking the Ottoman Decline: Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire,Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Journal of World History, 10/1 (1999), pp. 179-201;Caroline Finkel, `The Treacherous Cleverness of Hindsight`: Myths of Ottoman Decay, in

Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchange with the East. Gerald M. Maclean (ed.),(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 148-174.

2Alan Palmer, The Decline and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. (London: John Murray, 1993).The work was translated into Turkish with a different title that insinuates the presenthistoriographical discussion: Osmanlmparatorluunun Son yz Yl [The Last ThreeCenturies of the Ottoman Empire], trans. Belks orak Dibudak (stanbul: EkonomikYaynlar, 1993; reprint, Trkiye BankasYaynlar, 2003).

3

For a discussion on this notion see Douglas A. Howard, With Gibbon in the Garden: Decline,Death and the Sick Man of Europe, Fides et Historia26 (1994), pp. 22-34; Aslrakman,


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War; and modern Turkey, indifferent to its Ottoman past, was established in themodel of a western, secular, and democratic republic.4

This still axiomatic position sketched out most famously by BernardLewis places the Ottomans imperial history in the framework of three and ahalf centuries of not only political, military, and economic but also social andcultural decline. The period in question that resulted in the victory of theChristian West (with a vague denomination), according to Lewis, has led first toa humiliation among Muslims and then to an aggressive hatred towards theWest in Islamic societies. Lewis, therefore, recommended modern researchersin their current analysis on the roots of Islamic terrorism, to look back at the

last centuries of the Islamic history.5

On the other hand, Lewis` expertise onOttoman history particularly led him and his followers to trace back the declineof the Ottomans into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with a specialreference to the accounts known as nasihat-nmes (advice for kings). It is

proved that authors of these accounts or as Lewis once hailed them as theOttoman observers of the Ottoman decline, had didactic and, to some extent,

pragmatic purposes in their writings in which they glorified the needs of thegreat Ottoman sultans and provided lessons from the past for problems theyfaced. While the idea of the golden age, with its implicit references to theearly period of Islam, Asr-i Sa`det (the period of felicity), was regarded byMuslims as the pure and ideal period, the acceptance of such arguments wascommon and easy among the contemporaries and even some of the modernhistorians.6However, as this paper aims to demonstrate, many of these Ottoman

From the Terror of the World to the Sick Man of Europe: European Images of OttomanEmpire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth. (New York: Peter Lang,2001).

4

For a recent analysis on such fabrication of the Turkish official history in the early republicanera see Bra Ersanl,ktidar ve Tarih: Trkiye'de "Resmi Tarih" Tezinin Oluumu, 1929-1937[Power and History: The Formation of the `Official History` Thesis in Turkey], (stanbul: Afa,1993); Howard, With Gibbon in the Garden: Decline, Death and the Sick Man of Europe,

pp. 30-33.5Lewis expressed this idea in many of his publications: The Muslim Discovery of Europe(New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982); What Went Wrong?(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2002); The Crisis of Islam(New York: Modern Library, 2003).

6Bahaddin Yediyldz, Batllamann Temelleri zerine BazDnceler [Some Thoughts onthe Origins of the Westernization], Birinci Milli Trkoloji Kongresi Tebliler. (stanbul,Kervan Yaynlar, 1980), p. 332; Cemal Kafadar, The Myth of the Golden Age: Ottoman

Historical Consciousness in the Post--Sleymanic Era, in Sleyman the Second and His Time.Halil nalck and Cemal Kafadar (eds.), (stanbul: The ISIS Press, 1993), pp. 37- 48.


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authors had personal agendas in their efforts to reform the state and indeed theirproposals had not always practical values. It is also argued that attempts to

evaluate strengths and weakness of the Ottoman power in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries based on these accounts are futile efforts. What it needs to

be done, as it was exemplified in the second part of this paper, is to look atparticular themes in the Ottoman history in the early modern period and toevaluate it with its own terms.

The Decline Theme in the Ottoman History

Criticized being a teleological construction of the Ottoman past (and Islamicsocieties in general) the decline paradigm has not only long kept scholarsapathetic to analyzing many peculiarities of the long-lived Ottoman imperialorganization, but also blinded the comparative historians to analyze theOttoman history within a larger framework.7 In addition to the paradigm inquestion, the inclination of modern Ottoman historians to treat their subject-matter as unique, different, incomparable, and incommensurable, asargued by Abou-El-Haj, has not allowed for a dialogue with other regions anddisciplines.8 Furthermore, the tendency among Ottomanists to perceive theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a parenthesis between golden age andmodernization has also affected the historical research in a negative manner.9

Beginning from the 1970s, however, historians from different schools andtraditions have begun to put new perspectives and insights on theadministrative, financial, military, and intellectual histories of the empire. M. G.S. Hodgson, an eminent scholar of Islamic history, considered the replacementof the new institutions in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies with the old ones as indications of the Ottoman power and ability.10

Following the same line of argumentation, Fernand Braudel wrote that howthen is one to believe that all cities, ancient and restored, or new and sometimes

7Linda T. Darling,Revenue-Raising and LegitimacyTax Collection and Finance Administrationin the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1660.(Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 4-7.

8 Rifa`at `Ali Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth toEighteenth Centuries.(Albany: State University of New York, 1991), p. 2.

9 Such criticism to the Ottoman historiography was first put by alar Keyder and Huricihanslamolu in their article, Agenda for the Ottoman History,Review, I/1 (1977), pp. 31-55.

10

M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 3: The Gunpowder Empires and ModernTimes. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 126.


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very close to the western pattern, could possibly have prospered in a Turkeysupposedly in decline? Why should something generally considered to be a sign

of progress here be thought a sign of deterioration?11 Economic historianRoger Owen criticized the notion of the economic decline in the Middle East forthe period 1500-1800.12 Halil nalck, the doyen of the Ottoman history,

published an article on the seventeenth century Ottoman finance and militarywith a title, Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700, that credited the period in question with the term transformation, ratherthan decline.13 In his seminal work on the seventeenth century, Ottomanhistorian Suraiya Faroqhi has urged the modern scholars to deal not only with

the collapse of the Ottomans but also with significant elements that kept them inpower for about three hundred years.14Along with these studies, Edward Said`sOrientalism15 and its dramatic effects on the intellectual life in the followingdecades have formed an important background for the then growing criticismagainst the declinist literature.16 According to Said, historians have toabandon the Eurocentric views that contributed essentially to the self-identification of the West, and should make an effort to establish new

paradigms to understand the historical developments regarding the Middle East.The interest that this revisionist approach brought to the Ottoman history

coincided with the developments in Turkish national and international politics.The conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East and the compromise of themodern Turkish state with its Ottoman past have augmented the demand foranalytical, multi-dimensional works on the Ottoman Empire. Inspired by this

11Fernand Braudel, Civilization andCapitalism Fifteenth-Eighteenth Century: The Perspective ofthe World. (California: University of California Press, 1992 [originally in French, 1979]), p.469.

12Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914.(New York: Methuen, 1981),

particularly, pp. 1-23. For an earlier criticism of the author see The Middle East in theEighteenth Century An Islamic Society in Decline? A Critique of Gibb and BowensIslamic Society and the West,Review of Middle East Studies1 (1975), pp. 101-112.

13 Halil nalck, Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700,Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980), pp. 283-337. nalck, however, took a rather declinistposition later on in his interpretation of historical developments in the early seventeenthcentury in his An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, Halilnalck and Donald Quataert (eds.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 22.

14Suraiya Faroqhi, Crisis and Change, 15901699, in An Economic and Social History of theOttoman Empire, 13001914. Halil nalck Donald Quataert (eds.), (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994), p. 414.

15

Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon, 1978).16I used term declinists to describe writers who asserted that things were getting worse.


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recent political and cultural re-orientation and aforementioned seminal studies, asignificant number of Ottomanists have attempted to analyze the past from

different angles. Some of the historians in this group have focused on howtheclassical Ottoman system, i.e., the timar (land tenure) and devshirme (practiceof recruitment) institutions changed17 while some others have discussed themilitary and technological capacities of the Ottoman power in the period. Forinstance, in his study on the Ottoman military technology in the seventeenthcentury, Jonathan Grant reached a conclusion that not only the Ottomans butalso the Venetians were late-comers to the idea of galleon fleets: In the late1640s and early 1650s, the Ottomans increased their vessels and the Venetians,

recognizing the vital role of sailing warships by this time, began building theirown in 1667. In Grants view, throughout the first half of the eighteenthcentury the Ottomans maintained a naval balance with the Venetian forces.18Moreover, gostons study on the firearms in early modern period has also

proved that the Ottomans kept their superior position in firepower and logisticsover the Austrian Habsburgs and Venetians until the very end of the seventeenthcentury.19 Writing on the developments of new methods of attacking anddefending forts in early modern Europe, Mark L. Stein, furthermore, haveargued that the Ottomans were well aware of the recent developments inEuropean fort-building techniques and became quite skilled at conductingsieges, as is evident from the course of their military activities during thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries.20

The Decline in the Contemporary Accounts

Following Central Asian, Persian, and Islamic traditions, Ottoman scholars(ulema) and statesmen from the beginning of the empire had written numerous

17Douglas A. Howard, The Ottoman Timar System and its Transformation, Unpublished Ph.D.Dissertation, Indiana University, 1987; I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan`s Servants: TheTransformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550-1650. (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1983).

18Grant, Rethinking the Ottoman Decline, pp. 187-188.19 Gbor goston, Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology in the Fifteenth to

Seventeenth Centuries,Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47/1-2 (1994),pp. 15-48; goston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in theOttoman Empire(Cambridge, 2005), particularly chapter 2.

20

Mark L. Stein, Guarding the Frontier. Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe.(London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 36-48.


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nasihat-nme works to provide guidance and advice to the members of theruling class.21 The quantity of these accounts had dramatically increased,

particularly, in the second half of the sixteenth century. The authors of theseworks discussed mainly the reasons for the decline of the imperial system and

provided a number of proposals to prevent this trend. Many of them were awareof the fact that the basic institutions of the Ottoman classical system were inchange. It was, in their terms, a period of nizm- leme ihtill ve rey veberyya infil [revolution to the worldly order and indignation to thesubjects].22 Thus, the restoration of dire-i adlet (circle of justice)23 anderkn- erba`a (four pillars or estates)24 constitute the central themes in their

proposals.25

Written in 1541, safnme(The Book of Asaph) of Ltf Paa,the grand vizier of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566), wasregarded as the first account in the declinist genre in the Ottoman literature.26Besides, Koi BeysRislethat he penned for Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623-1640)

21 For an overview of this genre see Agah Srr Levend, Siyaset-nameler, Trk DiliAratrmalar Yll-Belleten (1962), 167-194; Bernard Lewis, Ottoman Observers ofOttoman Decline,Islamic Studies1 (1962), pp. 71-87.

22 Mehmet z, Kanun-i Kadimin Peinde: Osmanlda zlme ve Geleneki Yorumcular.(stanbul: Dergah Yaynlar, 1997; reprint 2009), p. 16.

23The Sultanate stands on its treasury. The treasury stands by good management. By injustice(zulm) it falls. safnme, p. 35, quoted by Lewis, Ottoman Observers of OttomanDecline,p. 73.

24 These four social classes are the military, the learned, the merchants, and the peasants.According to the reform writers, these four classes should not be intermingled; they shouldkeep the level of their own profession at the highest quality, and, as the organs in human body,should work together. For this theory that was probably borrowed from Ibn Khaldun seeMustafa ibn Abdullah (known as Ktib elebi),Dstrul-Amel li Islahil-Halel, (manuscriptdated 1653; it was printed in stanbul in 1863-64), pp. 124-126. The references here are givento the printed version.

25 These authors and their proposals have been subject to numerous studies including Walter

Livingston Wright, Introduction to Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs andGovernors-Nasa'ih iil-vzera ve'l mera of Sar Mehmed Pasha, the Defterdar. (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1935), pp. 1-55; Tayyip Gkbilgin, XVII. Asrda OsmanlDevletinde Islahat htiya ve Temaylleri ve Katip elebi, in Katip elebi Hayat ve

Eserleri Hakknda ncelemeler, Orhan aik Gkyay (ed.), (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu,1957), pp. 197-218; Pal Fodor, State and Society, Crisis and Reform, in the 15th-17thCentury Ottoman Mirror for Princes,Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae40(1986), pp. 217-40.

26Rudolf Tschudi, Das Asafname des Lutfi Pascha: nach den Handschriften zu Wien, Dresdenund Konstantinopel. (Leipzig: W. Drugulin, 1910); Ahmet Uur, Asafname.(Ankara: Kltrve Turizm Bakanl, 1982);Mbahat S. Ktkolu, Ltfi Paa, safnmesi, (Yeni Bir Metin

Denemesi),Prof. Dr, Bekir Ktkoluna Armaan. (stanbul: stanbul niversitesi EdebiyatFakltesi Yaynlar, 1991), pp. 49-120.


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around 1630 on the reasons of the tribulations and changes of this world wasthe most famous account in this tradition.27 In his work, Koi Bey first

described the state of affairs during the golden age, i.e., the reign of the SultanSuleiman (the period that the aforementioned first declinist account was writtenon), emphasized the reasons of the decline in the imperial system, and then

provided suggestions to reform it in the most traditional way. According to him,the reasons for the Ottoman decline were clear: After Sultan Suleiman, the

power of the grand vizier had become limited with the involvement of otherhigher officials and residents of the palace (which includes women) into theimperial administration. The Ottoman classical devshirme and timar systems

became defunct when foreign elements that is Turks, or those not fromdevshirme origin- had begun to be welcomed into ruling positions. The land andthe offices had been granted to the newcomers not in return for their abilitiesand services but because of nepotism and corruption. Scholars who had judicialresponsibilities and powers were also corrupted.28 In the last pages of hisaccount, Koi Bey proposed that, under urgent and necessary conditions, theruler should use force to suppress the rebellions. Additionally, to prevent theuprisings of the military class, the ruler must have a limited number butobedient soldiers. Confiscation of the illegal waqf(pious foundation) lands andtheir distributions to imperial officials and paid soldiers would definitelyincrease the revenues of the treasury, according to Koi Bey.29

Risles written in the latter parts of the seventeenth century had nosignificant changes in terms of describing the current state of the imperialsystem and in their proposals to solve the problems. After a meeting in the

Divan (Imperial Council) on the budget deficiency issue, Katip elebi, asignificant Ottoman bureaucrat and intellectual of the period, penned his

Dstrl-Amel li-Islhil-Halel[The Guide to Practice for the Rectification of

Defects] at around 1653. In this short essay, Katip elebi formulated his ideason state, society, subjects, military, and treasury. In addition to theaforementioned causes, over-taxation and corruption in the ruling elite were thetwo main problems for the decline of the system in the perception of the author.To avoid a deficiency in the budget the imperial rulers should avoid luxury

27 For a modern Turkish transcription of the work see Ali Kemali Akst, Koi Bey Risalesi,(stanbul: Vakit, 1939).

28

Risle,p. 20-22.29Risle,pp. 55-60.


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goods.30 In his memorandum written at the request of Sultan Mehmed IV (r.1648-87),Telhsl-Beyn f Kavnn-i l-i Osman[Abridgments of the Codes

of the Ottoman Dynasty] (1669), historian Hezarfen Hseyin Efendi repeatedthe previous formulas while he considered the reign of Sultan Selim (1512-1520) instead of Suleiman the Magnificent as the golden age. Putting asignificant emphasis on the rule of law, Hseyin Efendi, proposed that meritshould be the only basis for distribution of offices and lands; dignity of thescholars should be restored; and judges should observe justice in theirdecisions.31

These works are illustrative of how the contemporary Ottomans

perceived the problems of the imperial system and what they suggested to solvethem. It should be kept in mind that medieval historian Ibn Khalduns theorieson predetermined courses and life-spans of the states were influential on theseauthors and visible in their writings.32One may argue that the decline notion inOttoman history, long before the modern period, was the creation of theOttomans themselves. The zenith of the Ottoman power, as these authorsgenerally argued, was the start of the imperial decline. The pictures theseauthors draw were highly selective and, as the modern scholarship has proved,the proposals these declinist writers had suggested were not compatible with theinternal and external developments in many occasions.33 There was not agolden age as these authors had described, but these their ideal orders, andtherefore have potential to be contextualized within the political philosophy,rather than in the political history.34 Furthermore, from the point of political

philosophy, one may look at their writings as exemplary efforts of revival ratherthan the decline.

30

Ktib elebi,Dstrl-Amel li-Islhil-Halel, pp. 128-139.31 Hezarfen Hseyin Efendi, Telhsl-Beyn f Kavnn-i l-i Osman. Sevim lgren (ed.),(Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1998); Robert Anhegger, Hezarfen Hseyin EfendininOsmanlDevlet Tekilatna Dair Mlahazalar, Trkiyat Mecmuas10 (1953), pp. 365-393.

32 Reflecting the human experience of bodily changes from childhood to maturity and theinevitable decay of physical and mental capacity in old age Ibn Khaldun made an analogy

between states and human beings. For a detailed work on this idea see Cornell Fleischer,Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and Ibn Khaldunism in Seventeenth-Century OttomanLetters, Journal of Asian and African Studies 18 (1983), pp. 198-220; Ejder Okumu, bnHaldun ve Osmanlda kTartmalar,Divanlm Aratrmalar6 (1991), pp. 183-209.

33Mehmet z,Kanun-i Kadimin Peinde, p. 113.34

Cemal Kafadar, The Question of Ottoman Decline, Harvard Middle Eastern and IslamicReview4 (19978), p. 43.


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In his works on the functionality of the Ottoman reform proposalsDouglas A. Howard demonstrated that the ideas of Koi Bey were not put into

practice by Murad IV, who indeed had ordered him to prepare his report, whenhe reformed the timar system in 1633-34.35 Furthermore, after a close and acareful analysis of these complaints and proposals under the light of biographiesof their authors it became evident that many of the declinist writers werevoicing their criticisms within the official ideology and, to some extent, to

protect their personal status and/or social classes.36 Without putting intoconsideration of this aspect of the Ottoman observers of the Ottoman decline,modern historians who interpret the literal meaning of these accounts will be the

victims of their sources.37

Thus, to have more balanced views on the Ottoman system, it is requiredto put the European observers into the discussion. In 1668, Sir Paul Rycaut, thesecretary of Lord Winchelsea, England`s ambassador to Istanbul, completed hiswork, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, after spending six years in theOttoman capital. With its multi-dimensional and relatively impartial approachthis work provides a significant account to evaluate the state of the affairs in theOttoman Empire from the perspective of a learned westerner and to compare itwith the Ottoman declinist writers. In his perception, there were no reliques ofancient justice, or generosity, of discreet government, or obedience to it, ofcourtesies or concord, of valour or counsel, nor yet of confidence, friendship, orgenerous fidelity, and sharing the similar line with his Ottomancontemporaries, he saw a decline in the Ottoman system.38 However, hecontinued his observations as follows:

35Howard, The Ottoman Timar System and Its Transformation, 1563-1656, pp. 193-98.36

Douglas A. Howard, Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of Decline of the Sixteenthand Seventeenth Centuries. Journal of Asian History 22/1 (1988), pp. 52-77; Abou-El-Haj,Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire,pp. 20-40.

37Caroline Finkel, `The Treacherous Cleverness of Hindsight`: Myths of Ottoman Decay, p.153. For a recent analysis on the Ottoman nasihat-name that discusses their importance for the

political philosophy of the Ottomans see okun Ylmaz, Osmanl Siyaset DncesiKaynaklar ile lgili Yeni Bir Kavramsallatrma: Islahatnmeler, Trkiye Aratrmalar

Literatr Dergisi, 1 / 2 (2003), pp. 299-338.38Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire. Containing the Maxims of the Turkish

Politie, the most material points of the Mahometan religion, their sects and heresies, theirconvents and religious votaries. Their military discipline, with an exact computation of their

forces both by land and sea. Illustrated with divers pieces of sculpture, representing thevariety of Habits among the Turks.London, 1668, p. 169.


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But though this Empire hath many of these distempers, and beginsto grow factious, and yet slothful, and desirous to avoid the

occasions of war, as all governments have been which in theiryouth and first beginnings were eager, active, and provokedthrough poverty, in their riper years grown rich, and luxurious with

plenty, have declined afterwards as from the meridian of theirgreatness and power; yet the Turks maintain still the extent of theirdominions, and if they have lost ground in one place, like the sea,they have recovered it in another; it is Asia the Persians have taken

from them Rivan, Schirvan, Tebris, Lyris, and Ghenge, it is but a

recovery of their own dominions; if they are dispossessed inEthiopia, of Aden, and other parts of Arabia Felix, they haverecompensed themselves in Europe, by their footing in Candy, andin Hungary, by the late conquests of Newhausel, and Novigrade,and in Transilvania, by the additions of Janova and Waradin.39

On the military technology and logistics capabilities of the Ottomans,Rycaut also put these insights: The Guns are the biggest and as well cast andmoulded as any in the world; for the last Expedition in Hungary there were 40

pieces of new Cannon cast and transported by way of the Black Sea, and thenceby the Danube unto Belgrade and Buda.40The account of this western observeris significant to be used in the discussion that the decline is a relative andgeneralist term hinders and it significant dimensions of the imperial systems inearly modern period.41

The Kprl Restoration: A Gap in the Decline Narrative

During the uninterrupted vizierate of the Kprl family of Albanian originfrom 1656 to 1683, the Ottoman Empire had seen long years of stableleadership, imperial restoration, and numerous military successes. KprlMehmed Pasha who accepted the post at the age of seventy-one and remained inoffice for five years until his death in 1661, first dismissed the chief treasurer

39Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire,p. 170.40Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 200.41

For a discussion of other decline narratives for this period see J.K.J. Thompson, Decline inHistory: The European Experience. (London: Polity Press, 1998).


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and the grand mufti, exiled the Chief Eunuch to Egypt with the full licensegranted him by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV (r. 1648-1687). With this power

in hand, Mehmet Pasha executed the admiral, the commander of the Janissaries,and a tax-collector, among many others, whom he founded responsible for thefall of Lemnos, the lack of discipline in the army, and the cruelty towards thesubjects respectively.42 While enforcing an effective governmental systemMehmed Pasha managed to curtail unnecessary expenditures. Under the strictfinancial policy of him and later his son, Fazl Ahmed Pasha who was in theoffice for fifteen years until 1676, the imperial treasury did not suffer from the

budget deficit between 1660 and 1670 in spite of many military expeditions.43

Beside, implementing an interventionist policy, the Kprl viziers succeededto establish order in Anatolia and Transylvania. It was during this period thatthe Ottomans took Crete (Girit) from the Venetians after a struggle lasting formore than twenty years. In addition to this, as expressed by Rycaut earlier, theOttomans forces captured Janopol (Tr. Yanova), Nagyvrad (Varad), rsekjvr(Uyvar), and Kamieniec (Kamanie) fortresses in Europe in about twenty years.

Before focusing on the Habsburg frontier to assess the Ottoman militarypower and governmental functions in this period it is appropriate to take thechanges in political balance in the Ottoman-Polish and Russian frontiers in thesecond half of the century into consideration. The Ottoman influence extendedinto the lands that constitute modern Ukraine when the Cossack hetman PetrDoroenko sought protection from the Ottoman sultan in 1669 to defend histerritories against the attacks of Poles, Russians, and Crimean Tatars. In 1672,the Ottoman army, under the command of the Ottoman Sultan and the grandvizier, marched into Poland, conquered the fortress of Kamieniec and advancedas far as Lww. With the Buczacs Treaty that was signed on October 16 th, 1672,the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to submit 80,000 golden coins

that they promised in Lww to urge the Ottomans to lift the siege and also topay an annual tribute to the Porte. Podolia remained under the Ottoman rule andthe Poles had to recognize the independence of the Cossacks. Although wars inthe region continued afterwards and the Ottoman soldiers could not defeatSobieskys army in Chotin (Hotin) in 1673, Podolia remained in the hands of

42M. A. Cook (ed.),A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1976), p. 164.43Hezarfen Hseyin elebi, Telhsl-Beyn, p. 89.


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the Ottomans until 1699, and the Russian Tsar had to abandon his plans toseizure the Cossack lands.44

The rising Ottoman power at that time was not only visible the north-westof the Black Sea but also in the Central Europe. The military achievement of theOttomans in this period forced the Habsburg rulers to organize new borderzones and new methods of border defense. What goston put for the sixteenthcentury mentioning that the Ottoman pressure played an important role inHabsburg military-fiscal modernization and in the creation of what becameknown as Habsburg Central Europe45was equally applicable for the secondhalf of the seventeenth century. Six border captaincies that were established in

the sixteenth century on the Ottoman frontier by the Habsburgs remained theirsignificance in the following century. Moreover, after a successful campaign ofthe Ottomans into Upper Hungary in 1663 that resulted with the loss of thersekjvr fort, the Habsburgs had to erect another strong fort, Liptvr, on the

bank of the Vg River to defend Vienna, the imperial capital.46With the Treatyof Vasvr of 1664 that remained valid until 1682, the Ottoman influence inTransylvania was officially recognized by the Habsburgs for the first time.

On the other hand, the Ottomans significantly increased the number oftheir garrison soldiers in the Hungarian provinces in this period. The Porte hadsix provinces in Hungary and there were 18,043 soldiers only in three provinces(Varad, Uyvar, and Buda) in 1662-63.47When it comes to finance, the sixteenthand seventeenth showed no difference since the treasury of the OttomanHungary experienced similar financial problems. According to a treasuryaccount of Buda for 1662-63 that goston utilized in his research, only one-third of the total revenue (37,312,411 ake) was collected from the territory ofthe Buda province, remaining dependent upon the external resources that were

44

There are a number of primary accounts in Istanbul libraries on the Polish campaigns in thisperiod. Among them Abdurrahman Abdi Paas Vekayiname [the Chronicle] and Hac AliEfendisFetihname-i Kamanie[On the Conquest of Kamanice] are particularly important aseyewitness accounts.

45Gbor goston, Guns for the Sultan,p. 195.46 Gza Plffy, The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System against the

Ottoman Empire in Hungary (Up to the Early Eighteenth Century), in Ottomans, Hungarians,and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest.Gza Dvid Pl Fodor (eds.), (LeidenBostonKln: Brill, 2000), pp. 56-58.

47 goston, The Costs of the Ottoman Fortress-System in Hungary in the Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries,in Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The

Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor (eds.), (Leidenand Boston: Brill, 2000), pp. 208-209.


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mainly received from certain Balkan regions. This amount however was muchsmaller than the Habsburgs spent to secure their borders against the Ottomans.

To compare the logistics, the Ottomans did not have significant problems inproviding food and war supplies to the Ottoman Hungary while it was a majorissue for the Habsburg side.48 These are some examples to demonstrate thestrength and capabilities of the Ottoman system in the given period.

The Ottoman Frontier Administration in the Second Half of theSeventeenth Century

Administration of the frontier provinces can be another theme in the efforts toascertain the degree of success and failures of the imperial system. It is true thatit was not always feasible for the Ottoman pashas in the frontiers to exchangeletters with the Porte concerning each local infraction, partly because of theenormous distance and difficult roads, and partly because no one in the Ottomancapital could be familiar enough with all the ramifications of local conditions inthe regions. Therefore, the Ottoman capital provided free-hand to the pashas inthese lands to use the imperial authority. However, as cases below would prove,these pashas were responsible for the welfare of the subjects mainly not to loosetheir supports vis--vis the enemy at the other side of the border, the Habsburgs.

Modern scholarship on the frontier management of the Ottomans hasreached to a conclusion that the Ottoman rulers did not impose ideological

pressure or implement a strict rule in these particular territories. To maintain thesultans rule, the Ottoman capital used whatever means available including awide use of the local elites, maintaining the pre-Ottoman local customs andregulations.49 According to this practice, which is known as istimalet (lit. tolean" or incline in the direction of) a classical Ottoman policy that aimed to

gain the support of people through reconciliation and protection, the Ottomanspaid significant attention to seek non-military and long-lasting solutions todisturbances in the newly conquered places. Thanks to this policy, theOttomans, from the beginning of their empire, could establish centuries-longrule in non-Turkish and non-Muslim lands. A few details may help to illustrate

48goston, pp. 225-228.49

Halil Inalc

k, Ottoman Methods of Conquest, Studia Islamica 2 (1954), pp. 103-129;goston, A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers. pp. 27-28.


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this facet of the Ottoman strategy and how it was at work in the second half ofthe seventeenth century in the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier.

Beginning with the governorship of Aslan Pasha in Buda (15651566)the governors in Hungary used local languages i.e., Hungarian, Slovak, German,along with Ottoman and Latin, in their official writings.50To be able do so, theyrecruited many educated natives for the translation offices and later appointedthem to significant posts in the provincial administration.51This official stancealso enabled the interaction of the Ottoman soldiers in the garrisons with the

people. Seeking employment opportunities, local men and women sought toserve their new master.52 Zdenka Vesela-Prenosilova, a Czech historian,

published an article in which she analyzed the underlying reasons for thiscooperation with the Ottomans in the frontier regions.53She based her researchon the Habsburg-Hungarian court and Church memorandums and pointed outthat any cooperation and contact with the Muslim enemy was seen as treasonand apostasy for the Habsburg officials and the clergy; the punishment wastorture, flaying, and ultimately execution as in the case of Martin Juhsz whofled with a Turkish prisoner from the Habsburg prison in 1659. The reason ofhis execution, as stated in the official account, was that he intended to becomea Turk.54Nonetheless, such religious-based and Habsburg-backed propaganda

50 Yasemin Altayl, Budin Pasalarnn Macar Dilini Kullanm, [The Usage of the HungarianLanguage by Pashas in Budin]Ankara niversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Corafya Fakltesi Dergisi,46/1 (2006), pp. 255-269.

51 For philologists and the historians of the literature, the writings of these locals constituteimportant records for tracking the development of literary styles in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. See, Gustav Bayerle, Ottoman Diplomacy in Hungary: Letters from the

Pashas of Buda, 1590-1593.(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 5.52According to defter,the survey register of land, in the Uyvar province that kept in Istanbul in

the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive (BOA), Maliyeden Mdevver Defter (MAD), no. 2052,

fol. 4, Cemaat-i Katiban- Divan [The List of the Provincial Secretaries], the Ottomansreceived help from a native named Constantine to make the list of inhabitants. For animportant study on the subject see Pal Fodor, Making a Living on the Borders: Volunteers inthe Sixteenth Century Ottoman Army, in Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central

Europe: the Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest.Gza David-Pl Fodor (eds.),(Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 229-264.

53 Zdenka Vesela-Prenosilova, Slovakia and the Ottoman Expansion in the 16 th and 17thCenturies,in Ottoman Rule in Middle Europe and the Balkan in the 16th and 17th Centuries:

Papers Presented at the 9th Joint Conference of the Czechoslovak-Yugoslav HistoricalCommittee. Jaroslav Cesar (ed.), (Prague: Czechoslovak Academia of Sciences OrientalInstitute, 1978), pp. 5-44.

54

Vesela-Prenosilova, Slovakia and the Ottoman Expansion in the 16th and 17th Centuries, p.33.


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and severe measures did not stop the cooperation of the people in the regionwith the Ottoman officials. The subjects under the Habsburg regime left their

lands for the Ottoman services more frequently in the seventeenth century, andthe Habsburg authorities repeatedly sending letters to their local rulers to watchcases of Turkization (trkssg).55 Interactions in political, military andcultural levels between rulers and the ruled were the components of the life inthe Ottoman-Habsburg frontier and it is evident for the current research that theOttomans were still successful in implementing their classical istimaletpolicyin the late seventeenth century.

In addition to this, the implications of the classical daire-i adalet (the

circle of justice) concept are also visible in the Uyvar province, the northern-most Ottoman administrative in the Habsburg frontier.56 According to thisconcept, the rulers were expected to behave responsibly towards their subjects,Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and the subjects in return had to pay theirtaxes on time.57 In a report prepared by one of the treasurers of the province,Hafz Mustafa, on the financial difficulties of the province, it is possible to seehow the local ruling elite responded to the misuse of the provincial authority bythe governor. In his reports dated 1673, Hafz Mustafa complained about theirresponsible attitude of the governor whom he accused of being the destroyerof the welfare of the subjects and who thus prevented them to pay their taxes ina timely manner. Keeping in mind that one should read these types ofdocuments carefully and perhaps within the context of power relations, thisdirect report of the treasurer to the central administration is an indication of theworking checks-and-balances system in the given period.58 By way ofsupporting this argument, it is feasible to point out the case of execution of

55Ibid.56For a recent study on the Ottoman rule in this province see Muhammed Fatih al r, War and

Peace in the Frontier: Ottoman Rule in the Uyvar Province, 1663-1685, Bilkent University,Unpublished MA Thesis, 2009.

57Halil nalck, State and Ideology under Sultan Suleiman I inThe Middle East and the Balkansunder the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society. Halil nalck (ed.),(Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies and Turkish Ministry of Culture JointSeries, 1993), p. 71.

58Ahmet imirgil, Osmanldaresinde Uyvarn Hazine Defterleri ve Bir Bte rnei, GneyDou Avrupa Aratrmalar Dergisi 12 (1998), p. 327. The report with its facsimile was

published by Mark L. Stein see his Ottoman Bureaucratic Communication: An Example fromUyvar, 1673, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 20/1 (1996), pp. 1-15.


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Shrab Pasha in 1669, who was the governor of the province at that time, withthe accusation of peculation.

Furthermore, records demonstrate deduced tax rates offered to frontierpopulation during periods of financial difficulties have an importance in thediscussion. In 1674, after a big fire in the area, the pasha of Eger had exemptedthe inhabitants of Gyngys village from tax and other service obligations forfour years.59 In a document written by Defterdar Mehmet Efendi the total taxdebt of the subjects living in Doln Kamanec village near the Nitra River wasreduced to sixty-nine piaster from eighty-one due to their poverty.60In anotherdocument kept in the Rimavska Sobota city archives, the inhabitants of the city

borrowed interest-free loans from the Ottoman governor, KapAasMustafa,to fulfill their tax duties in 1666.61Joseph Blakovi, who examined the Ottoman taxation system in upper

Hungary, found out that the tax ratio imposed on the subjects by the Ottomanswas consisting of ten percent of their annual revenues whereas the Habsburgswere demanding nineteen percent. He concluded that such an advantageous taxrate was one of the main reasons for the people living in this region to show atendency towards the Ottoman regime.62 This tendency was accomplished in

part by spelling out the terms of association with the Ottomans in the imperialland survey which followed all Ottoman conquests. In 1554, after the capture ofthe Filakovo castle by the Ottomans, leaders of approximately six hundredvillages were voluntarily accepted the Ottoman rule.63A century later, after theestablishment of the Uyvar province in 1663, again, the heads of more thanseven hundreds and fifty villages applied to the Ottoman pasha to be the tax-

payers of the empire.64

59Blakoviused this document in Gyngys City Archive, nr. 207. See, Osmanllar HkimiyetiDevrinde Slovakyada Vergi Sistemi Hakknda [On the Tax-system in Slovakia duringOttoman Rule],Tarih AratrmalarDergisi, 7/12-13 (1969), pp. 97-98.

60 Vojtech Kopan, Academician Jan Rypka and Research into Osmanli Documents inSlovakia,Archiv Orientalni54/3 (1986), p. 213.

61This document was published in Josep Blakovi,Rimavska Soboto v ase osmansko-tureckehopanstva [Rimavska Sobota at the time of the Ottoman-Turkish Reign], (Bratislava: Obzor,1974), p. 199.

62Blakovi, Osmanllar Hkimiyeti Devrinde Slovakyada Vergi Sistemi Hakknda, p. 95.63Ibid, p. 89.64

Yusuf Blakovi, Kprl Mehmed Pasanin Macarca Bir Ahidnamesi [A HungarianAhidname of Kprl Mehmed Pasha], Trkiyat Mecmuas15 (1968), p. 38.


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Apart from taxation, the Ottoman tolerant attitude towards different faithswas another dimension in the istimalet policy. While the Catholic Habsburgs

tried to forcefully convert the Protestants in the region, the Ottoman rulers didnot interfere with the religious practices of their subjects. Furthermore, as aletter penned in December 1680 by Mehmet Pasha, the governor of Uyvar,indicates that the Ottoman rulers gave permission to Franciscan monks arrivingfrom the Habsburg side to seek financial resources among their followers in theOttoman territory.65

Some of the documents in the Slovakian city archives also provide dataon population movements in the Ottoman Hungary. It is very well-known that

the Ottoman and Habsburg subjects were moving to prosperous cities andvillages, namely to the hass, private, lands of the Sultan for security andemployment needs. As an ahidname, capitulation, written in Hungarian in 1647demonstrates that the settlement requests of the foreigners on these lands werewelcomed by the local Ottoman officials who were in need of more labor towork in the farms.66

Conclusion

The pitfalls the Ottoman contemporary decline accounts have made it hard todraw a substantial picture of the Ottoman imperial system and society in theseventeenth century. The static image of the Ottoman organization as presented

by these authors lends itself admirably to political statements in nineteenth andtwentieth century contexts and led scholars like Bernard Lewis to misuse andmisinterpret these accounts. Modern historian who would like to draw asubstantial picture of the given period should use these accounts carefully and,if feasible, with a comparative approach.

Thanks to the revisionist attempts in Ottoman historiography in the lastthree decades, historians of the empire have begun to have a fundamentallydifferent perception of the Ottoman politics and policies in the seventeenth andthe following centuries. This path-breaking new perception is helpful not onlyto understand and appreciate the now-defunct imperial system but also of the

65Kopan, Academician Jan Rypka and Research into OsmanlDocuments in Slovakia, p. 215.66 This document is preserved in Miskolc City Archive, Turkish Letter, nr. 20. Blakovi

published the document in his article, Kprl Mehmed Paan

n Macarca Bir Ahidnamesi,p. 39.


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contemporary Middle East. Challenging the decline paradigm energized modernOttoman historians to have a comparative approach and position the Ottoman

history into the global scale. It also helped to revitalize a discussion onEurocentric approaches to history and the concept of progress itself.

Dissecting of the imperial system to evaluate particular regions andproblems would enable historians to see the capacity of the Ottomans inorganizing effective governing mechanisms. Given focus on the classicalistimaletpolicy of the Ottomans in the Uyvar province in the Habsburg frontierduring the vizierate of the Kprl family provides cases to discuss theworkings and capabilities of the Ottoman system in this understudied and

wrongly hailed period. Implementing flexible policies to enhance theattractiveness of affiliation of the people with the regime such as reducing thetax rates or the usage of local languages in the official writings, the Ottomanscontinued to implement their classical policy that had been successfully at workin the Balkans for centuries. Furthermore, the political, economic, and militaryachievements of the grand viziers from Kprl family in the second half of theseventeenth century stand out as a significant gap in the unsatisfactory narrativeof the Ottomans inevitable decline.


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